Tron: Legacy
Movies in our memories are a special beast. Trying to meet up to their expectations can be impossible. Putting the past into context however can help give an appropriate gauge of the present. So it is with Tron: Legacy. Though suffering from a number of the same faults as the original, with the past in focus it meets all the expectations and provides a nice finale to the original film.
The new film picks up twenty years from the original and traces Kevin Flynn’s son’s reconnection with his father’s company and his father. The first film finished with Flynn taking over his company, Encom, and the second film starts in 1989 when on a fateful night Flynn leaves his son Sam never to show up again.
Sam follows in his father’s footsteps, keeping the recklessness and computer wizardry, but losing any interest in the company. It is not until his father’s friend (Bruce Boxleitner) comes to tell him of a message he received from his father, from a pager no less, does Sam find out about the Grid and reunite with his father.
The performances are a bit shaky, though much like the original they get the proverbial job done. A little curious is Jeff Bridges’ Flynn who seems to have picked up Zen mannerisms from The Dude. It seems like either Bridges phoned his performance in or the director, Joseph Kosinski, unsure of where to channel the aged character, pointed to Bridges’ past.
Bridges has a second performance as the nemesis Clu, a computer construct from the original film. Where the original could work with the then young Bridges, the sequel has to contend with the effects of time. Consequently, computers are used to smooth out the elder Bridges’ wrinkles to give us the younger Clu. Unfortunately the performance falls flatly in the uncanny valley, utterly freakish. It proves to be quite jarring at first but fades away against the light show spectacle.
The computer graphics and 3D both perform excellently. The graphics have been dutifully updated, with the past in mind, to provide the generational leap expected in the sequel. Adopting the prior film’s color scheme, it provides the visual continuity expected for fans and the necessarily otherworldly appeal.
The movie is not displayed wholly in 3D. Instead, the real world shots are 2D, but the moment Sam enters the Grid, 3D takes over. Much like in Avatar, when presented with a fully realized CG world, the 3D really shines and provides some much welcome depth to the shots. It is a leap much akin to that in gaming from 1982 to the current day. The darkened imagery that 3D creates also proves to befit the computer generated world as it allows the bright neons to pop out of the screen and helps enhance the surreal feel to the world. In few movies does 3D prove to be engaging, especially with its faults, but when attempting to create full computer generated worlds it seems to have found its natural place.
The star of the show however is the soundtrack by Daft Punk. With their French Electrohouse influence, their score literally moves the film along in pace with its resounding electronic beats. Though at times bordering on a rave, with one particularly great cameo of the duo, the score magnificently manages to capture the mood of an updated sequel. The genres ’80s roots manage to, at the same time, keep the film connected to the original.
For as many things as the film does right however it finds itself muddled within its themes. The film pushes together messiah imagery, along with a heaping of totalitarianism, a gob of existentialism, and a smattering of new agey self-realization.
In the latter the new Kevin Flynn, well versed in the anachronisms of the Dude, fits right in. Clu is largely a single-faceted villain and the layer of CG over Bridges’ acting only further cements this. The other actors do an able job with what they are given, but largely the parts they are provided are one-dimensional. For all this, it is Michael Sheen in a rather small role that steals the show as a flamboyant nightclub owner. Still, keeping in mind the original, the flaws here are not uncharacteristic.
Tron: Legacy gives a fitting conclusion to the original. It provides strong updates with the latest in technology and 3D that actually works. It does fail with its characters and has difficulty in figuring out where its themes lie and what it wishes to communicate. Still, the movie provides solid entertainment and it evokes the original. The most resounding hit here is its musical score that provides the stable arc on which to carry the movie to its action-laden and inevitably cathartic conclusion. In coming to this conclusion, the movie accomplishes the chief goal of the original, providing a new world to a new generation and with it a load of fun.
